The Pearl Project

I just found out about it, though it had been announced back in March. In Fall 2007, Georgetown’s School of Continuing Education will begin a seminar, The Pearl Project, to “investigate motive and attempt to determine who really killed Pearl. They will also examine the wider relationship between the Muslim world and the press and profile others who have died in the frontlines of journalism.” It will be led by Asra Q. Nomani and Barbara Feinman Todd. More here.

I wish this was a congressional inquiry rather than a journalism class but every little bit helps.

I also wonder if press freedom and safety for journalists unknown in the Western world but who are operating in the “Muslim world” [I have serious issues with that description, but I won’t go into it here:)] will figure in in this seminar. For example, over 100 journalists who have attempted to cover Balochistan, who dig for information and follow stories have been either detained, harrassed, threatened, and/or killed by the Pakistani military. These journalists might not have high profile deaths and glamorous names in the Western media (here I mean Western European and American), but these are journalists who are on the ground and courageously reporting the military’s abuses and flagrant violation of human rights- they’re not “hotel journalists” or “telephone journalists.” The journalists who cover FATA and the NWF are in the same predicament.